


CardBox (Beta) – Property of Stark Industries® 2018

by zombie_socks



Series: E-Love [4]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Child Neglect, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Abuse, Valentine's Day, apps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 03:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13673007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_socks/pseuds/zombie_socks
Summary: When Tony Stark debuts his digital Valentine exchanging app, Natasha couldn't be less interested. But when her best friend, Clint Barton, gets some anonymous messages, she can't help but become invested in finding out who's sent them.





	CardBox (Beta) – Property of Stark Industries® 2018

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! 
> 
> As promised, here's a little something for Valentine's Day. 
> 
> (Also be mindful of the tags. There's nothing graphic, but past child abuse and neglect are mentioned. Nat and Clint and their rotten childhoods.) 
> 
> Enjoy some Valentine's Day High School AU goodness on me  
>  \- Z-socks

“Ugh, Valentine’s Day again?” Natasha complains, pulling her _Latin is_ Amet _!_ book from her bag and stuffing it in her locker as the morning announcements blare out in Tony’s overly enthusiastic and smarmy voice.

“Tell me about it,” Clint Barton grumbles from beside her, adjusting his backpack strap on his shoulder. The other one broke months ago and despite his duct tape fix, the strap continues to dangle unused. “It’s like, we just got through Christmas. Wasn’t that enough forced merriment and gift giving?”

“And it’s such an exclusive holiday. Only couples are allowed to celebrate this bastardization of a saint’s feast day.”

Overhead Tony Stark’s voice drones on about the Valentine’s Day Dance Friday night, get your tickets at the student council table now, folks. Nat rolls her eyes. “That dance is the worst part of this. All that _pink._ ”

Barton chuckles beside her, gently shutting her locker door once she’s finished and leading them on to his own locker to pick up his notes for trigonometry.

Tony barely takes a breath before continuing over the PA system, “And lastly, ladies and gentlemen of the student body, this year I’ll be demoing my latest project from Mr. Zola’s computing science class: an online Valentine system. Send anonymous love notes to all your special someones, be it friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, friends with benefits, orgy members, what have you. Through my delightful app. Sign up at lunch to set up an account and activate your Sin-box.” Tony laughs at his own joke before Vice-Principal Coulson abruptly replaces him and concludes with a reminder that messages sent via Tony’s system are to be kept PG.

 _Have a nice day,_ Barton mouths, impersonating Coulson to a T. It helps that he basically moved in with the guy after Clint’s rat bastard of a father went to jail for domestic abuse. Barton’s mother, now supporting two sons (one in the military and the other not yet eighteen) works two jobs and Clint never liked to be alone. Coulson offered his couch and video game system and only lives two blocks away. It was a no-brainer.

Clint picks up his books and slings his backpack into the locker with surprising grace. It was something Nat always admired about her best friend: no matter the situation, if it involved aim, Clint could do it beautifully.

“I feel like Tony’s system is going to backfire.”

“Wanna take bets on if the school will get sued?” Natasha asks.

Clint shrugs. “Sure. I’ll bet you,” he reaches into his pocket, “this handful of lint and a half crushed mint I took from Fury’s ancient candy dish last week.”

“Those mints are gross. I swear he ordered them twenty years ago and is still trying to get rid of them.”

“I’m kinda waiting for the day someone fishes out his missing eyeball.”

“Gross, Clint. And insensitive.” Natasha stops outside her classroom door. “See you at lunch?”

“You bet your pretty curls, red.”

 

“Do you want to sign up for CardBox?” class president and on-again-off-again girlfriend of Tony Stark, Pepper Potts, asks. Clint’s still trying to bum a piece of gum off of James “Rhodey” Rhodes who is trading places with Pepper so she can leave the student council table outside of the lunchroom to get a bite to eat.

“If I sign up can I get a piece of gum?”

Rhodey rolls his eyes, nods for Pepper to skip off, and proceeds to set up the screen on the school-provided digital tablet for Clint to sign up. “Just fill in your school email and create a password. The app can be downloaded for free, or you can log in from any computer in the school. “

Clint types away, signing in, and adding his name to the ridiculously long list of other registrants.

“Any questions about the interface? You can send messages by typing in the person’s name. The encryption software will keep it anonymous, but you can sign it if you want to.”

“I don’t plan to use this, Rhodes,” Barton states, holding out his hand for the promised piece of gum.

Rhodey sighs and hands a piece over.

“Get suckered in?” Nat inquires, appearing from around the corner, coming from the bathroom as per after-lunch routine.

“Rhodey promised me gum,” Clint explains, chewing exaggeratedly for her to see.

“You wanna sign up, Nat?” Rhodes asks.

Natasha puts up her hand. “Hell no. Tony Stark is not getting any information from me, even if it is just a school email address.”

Rhodey, for his part, seems to almost agree.

 

Nat waves to Clint as his bus takes off and proceeds to lean against the banister of the front steps, waiting for Bucky to pick her up. His community college class gets done at three, so she’s left with a bit of a wait, but doesn’t mind. It beats walking home.

Home. It’s weird to think about it.

For years she’d been living with her uncle, a rough man who moved to the US from Russia back in the heart of the cold war. Her parents had died in a tragic house fire when she was about three. Uncle Ivan wasn’t big on kids, but he made sure she was fed and clothed. Emotional needs were left unfulfilled and it had taken her a long time to thaw out and become more human.

It was one of the reasons she was so close to Clint. They’d both been traumatized and could share in the pain and nightmares. They helped one another recover and continue to heal. And Bucky and his boyfriend, Steve, only further helped that along.

She’d met Bucky at the Russian eatery Ivan had gotten her a dishwashing job at when she’d turned fourteen. He’d been studying for a backpacking trip across Europe and wanted to get a taste of every country he’d be visiting. She taught him some of the language, but mostly how to order vodka in Russian.

By the time Bucky had gotten back from his trip, Uncle Ivan had disappeared, fled the country, leaving Nat to live on her own. Bucky invited her to live with him and Steve and has been looking out for her ever since. Not that she needs a bunch of supervision, mind you. But it’s nice to have someone to come to her ballet recitals and spar with in their weekly tae kwon do classes.

Bucky pulls up in his used Honda around three fifteen and Nat piles into the backseat since Steve is riding shotgun. Bucky’s most likely dropping him off at his painting and illustration night classes at the university uptown.

“How was school, миленький?” Bucky asks, pulling out of the traffic circle and onto the main road. It’s about a fifteen minute drive to the university and Bucky’s car’s heater went kaput back in October, making the car ride chilly and all too reminiscent of winters spent with her uncle refusing to spend money on more sufficient heating.

“Boring,” Nat answers as she pulls out her physics book to start working on her assignment. Why had she let Clint talk her into taking physics with him? He’s so good at all that angle and geometry and friction shit. She’s only won a dart game against him once and it was when he was still recovering from his dad beating the living crap out of him.

God, how she was glad those days were over.

“Don’t forget we need to pick up an anniversary gift for Maria and Sam,” Steve reminds Bucky.

“Shit. Is it that time of year already? Why did Sam have to be all romantic and marry her on Valentine’s Day?”

“Honestly I think it was so Maria would remember. She does have a lot on her plate, you know. Being a DoD contractor does that.”

Steve worked for Maria for years as a technical illustrator for the Department of Defense. He always wanted to join the military but his rather fragile health ruled that out. He met Bucky at a gallery exhibit of veteran art therapy works. Bucky had enlisted but got discharged early in his career when an IED blew off his left arm. After a trip around the world with Steve by his side they came home, moved in together, Steve started going to art school, and Bucky was working towards his business or political science degree (he still hadn’t decided).

“Valentine’s Day is dumb,” Nat announces from the backseat. “All that saccharine mush and capitalistic hoopla. Buy chocolate at a crazy markup because that totally says I love you.”

Steve chuckles. “Yeah, okay. But it is still sweet.” He flashes a smile in Bucky’s direction. “And I like our Valentine’s Day sundae off.”

Ah. The sundae off. Where the pair take turns trying to create the ultimate ice cream sundae and end up using that chocolate syrup and whip cream for alternative purposes. Nat’s had to drown out many a lovemaking session with classic rock. Good thing Clint’s older brother, Barney, had been a fan and left all his CDs for Clint. She still needed to give him back that Eagles album she took two weeks ago.

“I take it then you’re not doing anything for the holiday,” Steve guesses.

Nat bobs a shoulder, writing a precise #1 to the left of the red-pink line in her physics notebook. “I’ll probably hang out with Clint, maybe watch a movie.”

“Need us to clear out for you two?”  

Nat lifts her head at Bucky’s statement. He’s looking at her through the rearview mirror, smirk on his face. Nat shakes her head and goes back to her homework.

It’s been a bit of a joke, an annoying one, that her and Clint have been K-I-S-S-I-N-Ging up a tree. She’s been teased about it ever since they became friends in fifth grade. And where she’d always scoffed and denied the petty remark about her incredible, wonderful, treasured friendship with Clint Barton, lately it had been harder to negate it.

Maybe it was because over the summer Clint had started filling out, growing into his large nose and hands and feet. He’d taken up archery and had started bulking up and was getting proper nutrition since his dad wasn’t there to take his plate away and say he didn’t deserve to eat. He’d grown more confident, had started sharing smiles and jokes with people around him, people that weren’t just her. Maybe that was making her a bit jealous or territorial. Clint was _her_ friend. And to watch him flirt with Bobbi Morse or Jessica Drew or Wanda Maximoff, made her want to stab something. Where were they when he had a black eye and split lip, because she was in the bathroom with him dabbing on Neosporin and concealer.

The thought of Bobbi or Jess or Wanda messaging Clint on Valentine’s Day via Tony’s stupid app suddenly has her guts in knots.

It’s like it’s automatic, like she’s not in control at all. Her phone is in her hand, and she’s downloading Tony’s app and signing up and signing in, and the next thing she knows is she’s looking at a timer. THREE DAYS UNTIL MESSAGES CAN BE SENT. It’s locked until Friday.

Good, it gives her time to chicken out.

 

The problem with having a three-day wait isn’t just that it left Natasha second-guessing this decision, but that it’s three days to have to worry about what she will say. Potentially she’s facing competition with three other contenders, and those are just the ones she knows about. Carol Danvers is still single and best friends with Jessica Drew (although if the rumors are true, Carol has a thing for Rhodey). And what about Darcy Lewis? Granted, flirting is her trademark, but she could really have a thing for Clint.

She’s being ridiculous and she knows it. The problem is the more she tries to shove it away into the back of her mind, the more the whole thing festers. She’s filled a whole notebook page with message ideas only to reject them all. _Happy Valentine’s Day, buddy_ is way too cheesy; it sounds like something Steve would send. _Be mine_ is too… much. And _I’m secretly maybe in love with you_ is far too honest. Natasha briefly flirts with the idea about asking her neighbor for help, but Sharon is already in college and they’d never really been close anyway.

So the three days go by in that manner: her worrying over what the hell she was going to say to her best friend, and Clint… well, Clint was the same. He did ask her if she was feeling okay on Thursday, though. She’d said she was fine but mentally cursed herself for being so obvious.

 

On Friday at precisely 8:05AM, the message board opens. Classes start at 8:10AM. This leaves Natasha with a mere five minutes to figure out what to say.

Thoughts race through her head, coming and going, being sent away as quickly as they come. She stares at her phone’s screen, fingers poised to type her one shot at this. The blank stares back. It’s almost like it it’s taunting her. She looks up, sees Pepper and Rhodey packing up the student council’s ticket book.

That’s it!

She rushes forward, hoping she’s not too late. “Pep, can I still get two tickets to the dance?”

“Um,” Pepper looks down at the closed coin box then back at Natasha. Nat’s not sure what she’s looking for, but seems to find it as she smiles and sets down the poster board advertising the dance. “Sure, Nat. It’ll be ten dollars. And you’ll have to tell me what you got for number nine on that physics homework?”

Natasha forks over the money and answers, “Yeah. The question is worded weird. It’s looking for terminal velocity without air resistance.”

Pepper hands over the tickets. “Okay. That helps. Thanks, Nat.”

Nat nods and with her ammo now in her pocket, she speeds through her message to Clint and hits send before her brain can stop her.

Her stomach protests the rest of the day.

 

“So you know how I wasn’t going to use Tony’s stupid messaging app?”

Nat turns to grin at Clint knowingly.

He rubs at the back of his neck. “Turns out curiosity got the better of me.”

“Curiosity killed the cat, Clint,” she replies, shutting her locker door, books for second hour tucked under her arm.

“But satisfaction brought him back,” Clint answers before adding with a motion toward Nat, “or her.”

Natasha grins at the inclusion.

Clint pulls out his phone, an older pay-as-you-go model that his mom had gotten him for his birthday this past summer. “And as it turns out, this guy’s got not one, but three secret admirers.”

Nat nearly stops in her tracks.

Three?

She’d only sent the one message. That means others were messaging Clint.

“Wanna help me figure out who they are?”

It’s a loaded question for sure. On one hand the idea of scouring the depths of the school to find whoever has a crush on her best friend (and possibly something else) is the last thing Natasha wants to do. On the other, finding this intruder and putting a stop to their escapades before Clint can find out is irrefutably appealing.

“Sure,” Nat answers as casually as she can manage. “Can I see the messages, scan ‘em for clues?”

He hands over his phone with a comment about her being Daphne and if that makes him Shaggy or Fred.

“Definitely Shaggy.”

He leans over her shoulder as she scans the messages and she notices his breath tickling her neck. She’s never thought of it as pleasant before and still isn’t really sure that it is; but it’s not _not_ nice.

Message one reads: Hapy V-Day QT ;)

“Well your sender is most definitely not an English major,” Natasha comments.

“Lay off, Nat. Not all of us like all those rules and regulations that come with grammar.”

“But it’s like being a part of an inside joke. Once you know all the caveats and addendums, you can stand there and roll your eyes at other people who don’t know them.”

“That sounds mean.”

“Oh like you don’t purposely try to wheedle in archery terminology into every conversation.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about; you’re way off target.” He’s smirking to the point of his eyes damn near sparkling.

She goes back to the phone to keep her stomach from doing its weird pull thing. The second message reads: Roses are red/violets are blue/I’m allergic to flowers/ fuck you, _achoo_.

“That’s…”

“A bit scary.” Clint shoves his hands in his hoodie pocket. “I get the feeling it came from that really weird kid. You know, Wade Wilson?”

“Wade Wilson is sending you terrible poetry?”

“We’re partners in RE.”

Remedial English. Clint really shouldn’t be in that class, but a slight dose of dyslexia on top of being temporarily deafened as a kid (seriously, Natasha was going to murder that son of a bitch father of his) meant that Clint’s reading and writing weren’t particularly great. As for Wade Wilson, Natasha’s working theory was that he was ADHD and bored out of his skull.

“It would explain the terrible English of the first message.”

But Clint shook his head. “Different message threads. The one I’m most excited about is this last one.”

The third message reads: Will you go to the dance with me? Y/N

“So who do you think it is?” he asks hesitantly, taking back his phone and staring at it.

Natasha opens her mouth to answer, a sudden bust of courage filling her and readying her to spill her answer.

“You think it’s Bobbi?”

Her courage crashes, an almost audible _whoosh_ as it comes tumbling to the ground. Trying her best not to be tight-lipped, Nat answers, “Could be.”

“She’s in your gym class, yeah?”

 _Don’t ask me what you’re about to,_ she silently begs.

“Could you maybe hint at it for me? Just see what she says, how she acts?”

Nat finds herself nodding. It’s his eyes, damn them. They’re hopeful and bright and Nat wants them to stay that way forever because she’s seen them dark and full of shame and tears too many times before. “Will do.”

He pulls her into a hug from the side, something loose and buddy-buddy. “Thanks, Tasha. You’re the best!”

Nat watches him leave for second hour, stomach sinking like lead.

 

Bobbi Morse is the captain of the basketball team, all long legs and straight blonde hair. She would be the kind of girl some crappy teen movie would make into the villain for the “quirky yet plain” protagonist, but the truth is Bobbi is pretty chill. She’s smart, resourceful, funny. _No wonder Clint has a crush,_ Nat thinks as she musters up the courage to ask a question she already knows the answer to.

“Hey Bobbi,” she starts, ignoring the part of her that’s screaming how stupid this is. She knows who sent the message. Well, okay. She knows who sent the message asking Clint to the dance. But there is the first message with the bad spelling and even though she doesn’t think Bobbi would write something so poor, there’s a small part of her that needs this bizarre conformation. “Did you send Clint a Valentine’s Day message?”

Bobbi shakes her head. “You’ve got no competition from me, Nat.”

Any relief that would’ve come from her negation is immediately pushed aside by Bobbi’s statement. _The hell?_

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Nat inquires, arms crossing over her chest defensively.

Bobbi raises her hands in surrender. “Whoa, nothing. Sorry.”

Coach May blows her whistle, instructing the girls to line up for warm up laps. Nat keeps pace with Bobbi, not letting her comment go. “You think I like him, don’t you?”

“Do you?” Bobbi shoots back. “I mean, I don’t blame you. Clint’s cute, pretty funny too. And those stupid green eyes of his.”

“They’re blue. Well blue-green. Sometimes grey or even gold if the lighting’s right.”  

Bobbi raises a confronting brow.

“What?”

“I think you know exactly what I meant, Nat.” She takes a few longer strides and pulls ahead. Or maybe Natasha slows down. It’s hard to tell with how much her head is spinning. All she did was correct Bobbi about Clint’s eye color.

Oh.

Shit.

She does like Clint.

And even though she knows she’s the one who asked him to the dance, there’s still the matter of the first message. Someone else likes him too…

 

“Wasn’t Bobbi,” she informs Clint over lunch.

He sets down his fork, bite of what the cafeteria ladies are claiming to be ravioli still on it. “Damn. I found out from David Ishima last hour that he’s going to the dance with Jessica. Maybe Wanda sent it?”

Nat wants to scream. She knows she should end this, tell him it was her. But that first message is still bothering her. Someone else contacted him. And with how many other answers Clint seems to be coming up with besides her, Nat’s not sure he’d be okay with the truth anyway.

“I can ask her.” _Why am I volunteering to do this?_ “We have Latin together.”

His eyes light up.

_Oh, yeah. That’s why._

“Thanks, Tasha! You really are the best.”

 

As Nat sits down next to Wanda before Latin class, the dark-haired girl already has her hand out as if to stop Natasha’s question mid-air.

“It’s a bit alarming,” Nat starts, “how much it seems like you can read minds.”

“Who says I can’t,” Wanda replies. Her black eyeliner and dark red lipstick make her statement that much more dramatic.

“So I guess you know what I’m about to ask.”

“I’ve got my suspicions.”

“So… did you?”

She bobs a shoulder, pulls out her notebook. “Clint’s a nice guy, Nat. But I’m not interested.” She takes out her pen and places it neatly on top of her notebook. “And you’re only hurting yourself by not telling him.”

Nat glares at Wanda or maybe more at her rational. She gets up to go to her own seat for class.

“He’ll say yes,” she adds before Nat gets more than a step away. When she turns to look at Wanda, though, the girl’s concentrating on setting up her page for the day’s notes.

Her mind doesn’t really stay focused on conjugating or learning new vocabulary. Instead it’s too busy dancing around the idea of telling Clint that she sent the message. On one hand, it’d be nice to get it off her chest, and who knows, maybe he would, as Wanda suggested, say yes to going to the dance with her.

The tickets are still sitting heavy in her pocket.

On the other hand, he’s not exactly guessed her name as the sender, so maybe this whole thing is one-sided. And she loves her friendship with Clint too much to let it become awkward because of some stupid message she sent via Tony’s equally stupid app.

When her teacher turns back around to the board, Nat slips out her phone with the hope that there’s some way to delete messages. Not that it would do much good, seeing as Clint’s already read it. But at least there wouldn’t be any evidence on her phone pointing to her as the sender.

Two messages.

_Huh?_

She opens the first message and reads it: Hapy V-Day QT ;)

She got the same message as Clint?

But… what? She opens the second and reads an apology from Pepper and Tony about some spam message that went out, clarifying that it’s not dangerous, but sadly not genuine. _Justin Hammer probably hacked Tony’s app to make him look bad or steal his A++ in Zola’s class or something. At least it’s only terrible spelling._ She slips her phone away and takes a few notes. _But that means that no one else sent Clint a message. It really is just me…_

 

“Any luck on the search,” Natasha asks as Clint packs up his bag for the day.

He shakes his head, eyes downcast and a sad frown on his face. “I tried everyone I could think of. Bobbi, Jess, Wanda, even Darcy and Emma and Jean Grey.”

“Jean, really?”

“I was getting desperate.” He picks up his bag and offers her a small grin. “Thanks, anyway. For trying to help me out. Knowing my luck, it was probably another spam message. You heard about that, right?”

“Yeah, I read it.”

“Read it? You got the app?”

She hesitates. “Yeah. Just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.”

“Oh.” He closes his locker door. “Well, thanks again. I guess I’ll see you Monday.” He turns to leave, shoulders a bit slumped.

“Clint, wait.”

He spins around to face her.

“You haven’t asked _everybody._ ”

His brows go up a bit, head cocked to the side.

She takes a breath and fishes the tickets from her pocket. It’s now or never. “It was me. I asked you to the dance.” She hands him the tickets as if to show him proof.

He stares at them, emotions crossing his features in unreadable combinations. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I don’t know. You seemed so happy and then started guessing everybody else–”

“–only because I thought you didn’t have the app–”

“–and I wasn’t sure how you felt about me, if it was the same–”

“­–I’ve been in love with you for years–”

“–and didn’t want to ruin our friendship with- wait what?”

Clint rubs at his neck, tickets dancing in his nervous fingers. “Nat, I’ve…” he blows out a breath, “I’ve always had feelings for you. You’re incredible. You’re strong and smart and funny, not to mention the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.” He’s blushing, pink high up on his cheeks and spreading. “So, of course. Of course I’ll go to the dance with you.”

Nat breaks into a grin wider than she ever remembers and rushes forward to put her arms around Clint. He clasps her close, smile rivaling only hers.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he whispers.

She pulls back just enough for him to see her answering smile and then she kisses him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
